Asia markets rise ahead of Federal Reserve's rate decision; China holds loan prime rates steady

Samsung Electronics co-CEO Kye-Hyun Kyung expects at least $100 million in sales from its next batch of advanced chip-packaging products this year, Reuters reported.

Kyung, who was speaking at Samsung's annual general shareholders' meeting, also said the company seeks to boost the profit share of its memory chip unit.

The company set up its advanced chip-packaging unit last year.

Samsung Electronics shares soared 5.3%, boosting the broader Kospi that rose 1.2%.

— Reuters, Shreyashi Sanyal

Shares of South Korean heavyweight Samsung Electronics soared more than 5% after chip giant Nvidia reportedly said the South Korean chipmaker's high bandwidth memory chips were in the "qualifying" stage for use in Nvidia's graphics processing units.

This comes after rival SK Hynix announced that it was set to deliver its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to customers, with Reuters saying that Nvidia would be its first client. Shares of SK Hynix plunged as much as 3.56% on Wednesday.

— Lim Hui Jie

China's central bank left its one- and five-year loan prime rates unchanged at 3.45% and 3.95%, respectively.

The one-year LPR acts as the peg for most household and corporate loans, while the five year LPR is the benchmark for most property mortgages.

Separately, Reuters reported that the PBOC has reshuffled its monetary policy committee to include securities regulator head Wu Qing and vice central bank chief Xuan Changneng.

— Lim Hui Jie

The Japanese yen hit a four-month low on Tuesday to hit 151.3 against the greenback after the country's central bank made a landmark policy shift to its monetary policy. This is its lowest level since it hit 151.71 on Nov. 13.

If yen break's past the Nov. 13 low, it will be at its weakest against the U.S. dollar since June 1990, when the country's asset bubble burst.

The Bank of Japan raised interest rates from -0.1% to around 0%-0.1% and scrapped its yield curve control policy.

— Lim Hui Jie

Eight analysts upgraded their target prices on two Canadian stocks in the past week, giving both more than 65% upside potential.

They were the only two companies on CNBC Pro's global stock screen that have received price target upgrades from five or more analysts in the past seven days, and also have potential upside of over 50%.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Ganesh Rao

UBS has named its high conviction buy ideas across Europe and Asia.

And some if its buy recommendations are "poised to captivate and elevate" investors' portfolios, according to the bank.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Weizhen Tan

Higher-than-expected inflation data sent all three major stock indexes down last week. But UBS believes that these declines are just blips on the radar of a still overwhelmingly positive U.S. outlook.

"Such setbacks in the data may cause some investors to lose confidence in the prospect of a soft landing for the U.S. economy, let alone a Goldilocks scenario. But we view these more like speed bumps along the journey," wrote Mark Haefele, the bank's chief investment officer of its global wealth management division.

Haefele listed the following three key reasons as to why he expects the U.S. macro environment to stay fairly healthy:

• "The disinflation trend remains evident."
• "The labor market is cooling, and growth is returning to a sustainable pace."
• "The key point for the market outlook is that the Federal Reserve wants to cut rates, even with inflation coming down more gradually than expected a few months ago."

"Our base case is for a soft landing with three Fed rate cuts this year, a backdrop that is favorable for quality bonds. As growth moderates, we also expect outperformance from quality stocks, those of companies with strong balance sheets, high profitability, and exposure to resilient earnings streams," Haefele added.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Investors are concerned high market concentration means a pullback is coming for equities, but Goldman Sachs expects a resilient economy and softening inflation will continue to be supportive of stocks.

"As our US strategists have shown, periods of high market concentration and momentum outperformance have generally been followed by 'catch-up' rather than 'catch-down' episodes, supported by better macro," Christian Mueller-Glissmann wrote Monday.

"While equity momentum has somewhat supported broader risk appetite … we see limited implications of a continued reversal barring a material US rate shock," Mueller-Glissmann added.

In fact, Mueller-Glissmann said he would buy any dip in equities. Still, while he remains overweight on equities, he noted there is limited upside to the firm's near-term price targets.

— Sarah Min

Nvidia shares slumped more than 3% a day after the chipmaker unveiled its widely expected next generation artificial intelligence chips.

Other AI chipmakers and semiconductor stocks fell alongside Nvidia, with Advanced Micro Devices last down more than 6%. Marvell Technology and Intel fell 5% and 2.5%, respectively. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing fell nearly 3%, while Broadcom and Micron Technology dipped 2% each.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF dropped more than 2%.

— Samantha Subin